The Invasion of the Tearling (The Queen of the Tearling #2)(6)

Five days after Javel came to the dungeon, three more Queen’s Guards stomped down the stairs. One of them was Lazarus of the Mace, a recognizable figure even to Ewen, who rarely left his cells. Ewen had heard plenty of stories about the Mace from Da, who claimed that the Mace was fairy-born, that no cell would hold him. (“A jailor’s nightmare, Ew!” Da would cackle over his tea.) If the other Queen’s Guards had been impressive, the Mace was ten times so, and Ewen studied him as closely as he dared. The Captain of Guard in his dungeon! He couldn’t wait to tell Da.

The other two guards carried a prisoner between them like a sack of grain, and after Ewen unlocked Cell One, they threw the man on the cot. The Mace stood looking at the prisoner for what seemed to Ewen a very long time. Finally he straightened, cleared something deep in his throat, and spat, a great glob of yellow slime that landed square on the prisoner’s cheek.

Ewen thought this unkind; whatever the man’s crime, surely he had suffered enough. He was a miserable, shriveled creature, starved and dehydrated. Mud had caked into the thick welts over his legs and torso. More welts, deep red rivets, crossed his wrists. Great hanks of hair had been pulled from his head, leaving patches of scabbed flesh. Ewen couldn’t imagine what had happened to him.

The Mace turned to Ewen and snapped his fingers. “Jailor!”

Ewen stepped forward, trying to stand as tall as he could. Da had chosen Ewen as his apprentice, even over Ewen’s smarter brothers, for exactly this reason: Ewen was big and strong. But he still only came up to the Mace’s nose. He wondered if the Mace knew he was slow.

“You watch this one closely, Jailor. No visitors. No little field trips outside the cell for exercise. Nothing.”

“Yes, sir,” Ewen replied, wide-eyed, and watched the group of guards exit the dungeon. No one called him any names this time, but it was only after they’d departed that Ewen realized he had forgotten to ask for the man’s name and crime for the book. Stupid! The Mace would surely notice such things.

The next day, Da had come to visit. Ewen was tending the new prisoner as best he could, though the man’s wounds were well beyond the power of anything but time or magic. But Da had taken one look at the man on his cot and spat, just like the Mace.

“Don’t bother trying to cure this bastard, Ew.”

“Who is he?”

“A carpenter.” Da’s bald head gleamed, even in the dim torchlight, and Ewen saw with some uneasiness that the skin of Da’s forehead was getting thin, like linen. Even Da would die eventually, Ewen knew that, deep in a dark place in his mind. “A builder.”

“What did he build, Da?”

“Cages,” Da replied shortly. “Be very careful, Ew.”

Ewen looked around, confused. The dungeon was full of cages. But Da didn’t seem to want to talk about it, and so Ewen stored the facts in his mind alongside the rest of the mysteries he didn’t understand. Once in a while, usually when Ewen wasn’t even trying, he would solve a mystery, and that was a great and extraordinary feeling, the way he imagined birds would feel as they swooped across the sky. But no matter how he stared at the man in the cell, no answers were forthcoming.

After that, Ewen thought he was prepared for anyone to enter his dungeon, but he was wrong. Two days before, two men in the black uniform of the Tear army had burst in, dragging a woman between them. But this was no fancy woman like the Regent’s redhead; she spat and kicked, shouting curses at the two men who dragged on her arms. Ewen had never seen anything like her. She seemed all white, from head to toe, as if her flesh had lost all of its color. Her hair was similarly faded, like hay that had sat too long in the sunlight. Even her dress was white, though Ewen thought it might once have been light blue. She looked like a ghost. The soldiers tried to force her through the open door of Cell Two, but she grabbed at the bars and hung on.

“Don’t make this any harder than it needs to be,” the taller soldier panted.

“Fuck you, you limp prawn!”

The soldier kept patient pressure on her hands, trying to peel back her locked fingers, while the other soldier worked on hauling her into the cage. Ewen hung back, not sure whether to get involved. The woman’s eyes fell on him, and he went cold inside. Her irises were circled pink, but deep in the center was a blue so light that it glittered like ice. Ewen saw something terrible there, animal and sick. The woman opened her mouth, and Ewen knew what was coming, even before she spoke.

“I know all about you, boy. You’re the halfwit.”

“Give us some help, for Christ’s sake!” one of the soldiers snarled.

Ewen jumped forward. He didn’t want to touch any part of the ghost-woman, so he took hold of her dress and began to tug her backward. With both soldiers free to work on her fingers, they finally succeeded in prying her loose from the bars and then flung her into the cage, where she ran into the cot and fell to the ground. Ewen was barely able to get the door closed before the woman hurled herself against the bars, spewing more curses at the three of them.

“Christ, what a job!” one of the soldiers muttered. He wiped his brow, where a mole grew like a small mushroom. “Locked in, though, she shouldn’t give you too much trouble. She’s blind as a mouse.”

“Only watch out when the owl comes hunting,” the other remarked, and they chuckled together.

“What’s her name and crime?”